Don’t worry, I’ve not finally lost the plot. Having completed the initial layers of newspaper in the area I’m working on I will now leave it a couple of days to dry out before adding more to make it strong enough to take the filler and hanging basket liner. In the meantime I have painted it so that I’ll be able to tell where I’m up to when adding the next layer. See? Not as daft as I look. The pink is a mixture of red poster paint and PVA. Red was chosen because it may seep through into the filler in places and a reddish tint will look like minerals in the rock where other colours might not be so suitable.

The area around the tunnel was done earlier this morning, it now looks more like a tunnel and less like a pile of loft insulation. You might think that the cutting looks too wide, so do I, but when the filler is plastered onto the rock faces either side it will become a better width for the narrow gauge railway. Remember this is On30, not OO.

Right, I’m going to spend the rest of today picking dried PVA out of the hair on my arms. The tunnel is big enough to get my hand in to retrieve any derailments or stalled trains but it’s not wide enough to glue paper on the inside of it without my arm rubbing against the tunnel walls.